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Yesterday Crash and Bang fielded questions I asked them. In case you missed it, Bang thinks he’s going to be 16 feet tall when he grows up. For Harry Potter fans such as us you know that Hagrid’s little brother, Grawp, was also 16 feet tall. Turns out Crash’s least favorite subject is social studies.

All the other days, it’s mom and dad fielding all the questions.

is for fielding questions. DW and I field them like Manny Machado fields hot grounders down the third base line, quickly and efficiently. Quick enough that we don’t have provide to much embarrassing detail yet efficiently enough to not provoke more questions.

1. Can I take this to school?

That all depends on what “this” is. The boys are lucky to have two teachers for parents so we know what’s allowed and what isn’t. Leave your Pokemon cards at home. Along with your toys, electronics, money, and pillow. It doesn’t matter that you say you’ll only play with it during recess. They stay home where they can’t distract you, distract your friends, cause problems, get stolen or broken or drooled on. But if “this” is a book titled Ain’t Gonna Paint No More or perhaps Matthew ABC or maybe Diary of a Minecraft Zombie then by all mean, go pack it in your backpack now. Books are most definitely allowed. If “this” is a piece of green beach glass and a chunk of coal, you giv’er. I’m sure your friends would love to see your softened glass and black coal.

2. What do lungs look like?

The outside of a healthy lung is pink and rubbery. Perhaps like a whoopee cushion? However, the inside, while still pink, looks more like a sponge. The process of breathing doesn’t start with the lungs, though. First, it passes through your lips, over your tongue and down your trachea. From there, the air separates into two tubes called bronchi. One goes to the left lung one goes for a beer to the right lung. The bronchi resembles trees, but not because they have bark and apples. It just looks like it has branches and twigs growing from it. The smallest of the “twigs” are called bronchioles which are so small they’re hairlike. At the end of the bronchioles are balloons (air sacs) called alveoli. There are about 600 million of them, or the same number of questions kids ask in day, in your lungs! But that’s not the end. Each of the 600 million sacs is covered in tinier blood vessels called capillaries. To learn more, check out this Crash Course we’ve been watching.

3. Why do we have to sleep?

My initial response is, “So you don’t turn into a tired crankenstein tomorrow.” However, sleep plays a much larger role than keeping us rested. In a process called consolidation our brain moves our memories from the short term file to the long term file. Research has proven that after people sleep they retain more information and perform better on memory tasks. So those all night study session we pulled in university were useless. We should have studied then gone to bed. This is why babies need 14+ hours of sleep and adults only need 7-9 hours. However, our bodies also need that horizontal time to restore and grow muscle, repair tissue and make hormones. The myth that you can “catch up on sleep” is false. It helps to get a bit extra sleep if you’re deprived, but you can’t “make it up”. In 1964 Randy Gardner achieved the longest anyone has intentionally, without stimulants of any kind and was scientifically documented to stay awake. He was awake for 264.4 hours – 11 days and 24 minutes. This is about the same amount time newborns keep their parents awake. Others have claimed to have broken that record but none are as well documented.

4. Do girls have pee pees?

Apparently, one of Bang’s school friends told him that they don’t. I’m not even going to question why they were talking about pee pee’s in school. The question was asked so I answered as truthfully as I could. “Yes, girls have pee pee’s. However, it’s not called a penis like a boy’s. It’s called a vagina.” Or a vajayjay. Or hoo ha. Or bird or box or a million other inappropriate slang words. I was holding my breath just waiting for the next question. I was ready to gamble my life savings (both dimes) that he was going to ask, “What’s a vagina?” In which case I would have said, “Go ask your mother.” But he didn’t ask. She lucked out this time.

Pretty much having a newborn is no sleep, no eat, no potty breaks. Til they’re about 8-10 weeks old. Then when they’re teenagers mothers don’t sleep til they come home, awesome nothing like the country song: I can sleep when I’m dead!

LM asked me how babies are made recently, and I told him about the dad having the fertilizer and the moms having the eggs that need to be fertilized. I added a few other details, and he was satisfied with it. A couple nights ago, BG told her doll that she was her mommy, and LM stopped her and said, “Girl, you’ll be a mommy one day when you’re old enough. You already have all the eggs, but they’re in your stomach and not your mommy parts.”

HAHAHA. My wife called it a “bird” and few other friends I met teaching did too. This makes it hilarious at Thanksgiving when my mother-in-law (talking about the turkey) tells us she needs to wash and stuff her bird.